Shelby County, Tennessee is located in the southeastern part of the state, and has a population of about 925,000.  It is the state’s largest county both in terms of population and geographic area. Its county seat is Memphis, the second most populous city in Tennessee after Nashville.

Prostitution and sex trafficking have been identified by local and national law enforcement agencies as persistent and formidable problems in the city of Memphis, and in surrounding areas. For example, in October 2013, a Memphis man was sentenced to over 44 years in federal prison for using violence to force eight women and two teens into prostitution. Ten victims, some as young as 15 years of age, testified at trial and said the trafficker forced them into prostitution by beating them with belts and crowbars and burning them with irons and boiling water. One victim testified the man forced her to engage in prostitution when she was pregnant with his child and induced her labor through a severe beating. This is just one of many sex trafficking cases known to have occurred in Memphis, and prostitution is considered a widespread problem. The city has also had documented cases of serials killers who specifically targeted women selling sex. Other problems include a case where a sex seller attempted to run over a truck stop employee who tried to get her to stop soliciting parked truckers. A series of high-profile sex trafficking arrests in Memphis in 2010-2011 had drawn national attention. While some cases had involved the trafficking of adult women, the vast majority exposed traffickers engaged in the sexual exploitation of children.

To address such issues, Tennessee state legislators created an anti-sexual slavery bill in June 2011, insisting minors arrested on suspicion of prostitution no longer be prosecuted but instead returned to their families.  In 2015, Governor Bill Haslam signed legislation into law giving TBI original jurisdiction over investigations of human trafficking. Additionally, the General Assembly approved funding for four Special Agents, who work exclusively to investigate human trafficking cases and train law enforcement statewide on recognizing and combating this type of crime. These four Special Agents have arrested or cited more than 200 individuals between 2015 and 2017. The nonprofit agencies Restore Corps and End Slavery Tennessee assisted by offering services, including housing, counseling and addiction treatment, to the women identified as potential victims of trafficking. The names of those arrested in this operation were posted at the TBI Newsroom.

Although the Memphis Police Department conducts occasional reverse stings to attack consumer-level demand, the vast majority of the area’s anti-prostitution efforts have focused on the arrest of prostituted women. In a 2002 white paper produced by the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, MPD interviewees reported that this was often due to “the smaller number of female officers available for undercover operations, and the perception of greater physical risk to officers posing as prostitutes” (Maloney & Mobley, 2002). Tactics appeared to somewhat shift in April 2008, when Memphis Police and the Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office announced they would begin seizing and impounding the cars of those charged with prostitution-related offenses. That same year, the city began releasing some of the names of arrested sex buyers to the public.

After 2008, there were fewer reports of large-scale sweeps to arrest male sex buyers.  However, in March, 2017, a web-based reverse sting was conducted by Special Agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and partner agencies. It resulted in the arrest of 38 men on prostitution-related charges; eight of the men responding to ads tried to buy access to sexually abuse a minor. During the three-day operation, undercover Agents posted four ads a day on Backpage.com, for about 7 hours per day. Approximately 475 different men responded to those ads posted. More than 8,779 contacts were made to those ads, through texts or phone calls. In some ads, undercover Agents posed as a juvenile girl. Eight men responded, and paid to have sex with an underage female. Two of those specifically paid money to have sex with 14-year-old girls. Two juvenile female victims of trafficking were recovered and referred to the Department of Children’s Services. The TBI Director said, “We have said all along that this is a demand-driven crime, and this operation demonstrates how very prevalent that demand is.”  “Operation Someone Like Me” was the eighth operation of its kind in the state, involving a collaboration between the TBI and detectives with the Memphis Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, prosecutors with the Shelby County District Attorney’s office and the nonprofits Restore Corps and End Slavery Tennessee.  In October, 2018, another reverse sting resulted in the arrest of 21 sex buyers.